When Kubo Met Sach

Chapter 2

Written by: Adrian Mata, Isobel Jones, and Emma Lupin

The next thing Sach could remember seeing was that he was almost wrapped around some kind of a blanket in what appeared to be an almost compact-like room. The walls were white, with various pieces of wood contrasting it. As he regained his consciousness once again, he then saw a much clearer image of one of the two people he briefly saw on the shore; the boy was now wearing a red kimono with a golden beetle pattern embroidered over it, with a gray cloth that was being worn as a sash, a moderately thin black belt worn over his waist, and a guitar strapped over his back.

Then his attention turned to the wounds that he had gotten from the training exercise incident last night. As soon as he began to notice them for the first time, though stitched up or bandaged, he moaned briefly before he sat up on the floor, seeing that a bowl of rice was placed right in front of him. The boy must've felt that he needed some food to eat in order to speed up the healing process.

The boy also noticed that the otter had an unsure look on his face. "You've got questions," he told him. "I can tell. You only have three. Go ahead."

"Where am I?" Sachairi promptly asked.

"You're in the Vastlands," he answered. "Right now, you're in the village. Kameyo and I noticed you were washed up ashore with some cuts and scrapes, so we took you here to treat them."

"Did I survive?"

"Well, did you?"

"I feel like I'm in some sort of weird place here... and I still feel some pain here and there. So... maybe I did survive?"

"Yes. And that was your last one."

Sach was taken aback, surprised that he had used up all of his questions - at least for now. "But--" he tried to say.

"No more questions," the boy adamantly reminded him. "Let me introduce myself..."

He then pushed the bowl of rice towards the otter in care, and his head made a gesture, his chin pointing down at it, which meant that he was supposed to eat it. The only thing Sach took note of was that there was no spoon; he was used to eating with one. Instead, there were two small, but long wooden sticks that were placed on another piece of wood adjacent to the bowl. Unsure if he was supposed to use and treat them as eating utensils, he chose to bring this up. "Um... there's no spoon," Sachairi reminded him.

"Do you want one?" he then asked.

"Yes!"

"Then why didn't you ask me?"

"Because you gave me only three questions to ask and that was it. Why--"

"Exactly."

This promptly hushed the otter for now. "My name is Kubo," the boy told him. "I'm 13 years old now, I've lived in a cave a couple hundred feet above the ground for almost my entire life, but I've always made sure to come to this village every day to tell stories. Even after all the chaos that happened to me a year ago. What's your name, sea otter?"

"It's not 'sea otter,'" he minded, "but I appreciate you recognizing what I am. My name's Sach. Sachairi Sea Otter."

"Sachairi," Kubo repeated to himself. "That's an interesting name. So what do you do?"

"Well, I was training to become an Octonaut - er, a marine biologist, so I'm a cadet. For the Octonauts, that is. We're like, this, um, oceanic rescue team that not only helps out creatures big and small, but we also take care of the environment as well. We just don't want it to end up looking like an underwater wasteland, you know?"